Intelligent Internet will integrate home equipment

To some, the name "Cyber Plains" - planned for a Co Kildare housing development - has resulted in the geekiest addresses in Ireland. However, recent advances in home-networking technology make the name less wacky as houses are to become more and more intertwined with the Internet. Home networking, whereby devices around the home can communicate with each other and connect to the Internet, is in its infancy, but analysts predict it will grow rapidly over the coming years.

Already some 30 million US homes contain two or more personal computers, and their owners' desire to share Internet connections and devices such as printers has already created a market for low-cost home networks. In the future many more devices will get interconnected, including televisions, stereos, videos, and game consoles.

When computing power is incorporated in everyday devices including fridges, light switches and water heaters, as predicted by technical forecasters at Andersen Consulting, home networking will allow for the remote management of houses from the Internet.

Analysts are predicting the value of the home networking market in the US alone to be $230 million (€217.7 million) next year, growing to $1.4 billion by 2003. This market will be fuelled by three competing home-networking communications technologies: phone-line, wireless, and power-line. The first of these connects various household devices via multiple phone sockets around the house, and is predicted to become particularly popular in the US where homes commonly have phone sockets in many rooms. Wireless networking, meanwhile, uses transmitters and receivers to connect various devices, meaning sockets aren't necessary. However, industry sources suggest wireless technology is relatively expensive, costing around $250 per node while the other technologies cost less than $100 per node.

Compaq for example, a member of the Home Phoneline Networking Alliance (www.homepna.org) last August agreed to install equipment from Californian manufacturer Tut Systems in its personal computers. Other members of the Home Phoneline Networking Alliance and its wireless equivalent, the HomeWorking Group (www.homerf.org), include heavyweights such as AT&T, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and Motorola. Such heavyweights have been sceptical that home networking via power lines was feasible. Intel, for example, had invested in such technology but concluded it would take a few more years to develop. The difficulty is that interference from devices using the existing electrical supply has limited the speed of data communications that could be achieved via plug sockets.

A self-described "upstart start-up from New Jersey" has just proven them wrong. At the Networking + Interop communications technology show in Las Vegas during the first week in May, Enikia demonstrated home networking over power lines at 10 megabits per second, the speed of many company local area networks. The company demonstrated streaming MP3 audio, Web telephony, and network games over the connections. This speed makes power-line technology a potentially powerful competitor to phone-line and wireless technologies. Enikia says its technology allows PCs and other devices to communicate simply by plugging them into the power socket. Its executive vice-president and co-founder Bob Dillon says: "Once you have high speed on the power-line, the phone-line option doesn't make sense any more. Just count the number of plugs you have in your house versus the number of phone jacks. Case closed."

Like any new communications technology these days, the success of home networking depends on the availability of devices and applications using the technology. For home networking some applications are already obvious, such as streaming audio via the controversial MP3 standard, whereby Internet users can download music from the Web. Using home networking technologies, an MP3 device could play music in any room in a house, controlled by a PC. Many other applications are likely. An existing but little-used standard for controlling switches, known as X.10, means lights, heaters or alarms could be remotely switched on and off from PCs, even remotely connected via the Internet. Security cameras could be monitored from work, while a range of new "smart" devices could report faults automatically. Enikia cites the example of a smart water heater which develops a leak.

Its onboard microprocessor automatically reports this via the Internet to a plumber, giving details of the faulty component. The plumber may then arrive with the replacement part before the house owner knows about the leak. The growing competition in the communications provider market in Ireland will likely spur the same commitment to home-networking services here. There may be only one Cyber Plains so far, but look out for Cyber Close, Cyber Meadows, and Cyber Heath, to name but a few.

Eoin Licken is at elicken@irish-times.ie